About Austin Burbridge

Now (twenty-first century)

Austin Burbridge is Executive Editor of Cinema Minima, a publication for movie makers which he founded in 1997. He instituted its “Sustainable Cinema” educational initiative. He organized its “Far From Hollywood” program, a series of mixers for filmmakers, in Paris and in Mumbai.

Then (twentieth century)

Prior to his work in journalism he enjoyed careers in technology, as a software developer, and in business, as an entrepreneur. (He also engaged in a brief flirtation with the movie business, wherein he tried to produce a remake of GILDA but that . . . is a story for another day.)

Education

He learned community-centered filmmaking and direct cinema technique from James Blue and David Hancock at Rice Media Center. As an undergraduate at Brown, he concentrated (“majored”) in semiotics, and art (the two concentrations have since been merged into one, “visual studies”). At the University of Chicago, as a visiting student from Brown, he studied art history under Edward Maser, and anatomy for artists under James Elkins.

Hobbies and enthusiasms

He likes print, ephemera, and works on paper. He collects stamps. He likes to watch chukkers at Will Rogers Polo Club. He is researching the lives of his great-grand uncle, Gilded Age gambler and gunfighter William Thomas “Billy” Burbridge (1854–1912), and of Billy’s daughter, Hazel, the Countess of Montméja. He lives in Southern California.